Reward programs may be used as marketing devices to provide incentives to individuals to perform transactions using accounts, for example financial accounts. The reward programs may be managed by entities such as financial institutions. In a conventional reward program, a reward account of an individual is established and linked to or associated with a financial account to allow the individual to receive a type of benefit in exchange for using the financial account in performing transactions. The benefit may include reward units, such as reward points, and the reward units may be exchanged for goods and services, such as airline travel and consumer products offered by various merchants and service providers. A financial transaction card is commonly associated with the financial account and/or the reward account, and is provided to the individual to facilitate the performance of the transactions without requiring the use of cash or personal checks.
The number and variety of reward programs managed by entities has increased greatly, and the increased number of programs has in turn resulted in increased utilization of reward programs by individuals. For example, a large number of financial institutions presently offer and manage reward programs, and it is common for an individual to have multiple independent financial accounts each associated with a separate reward type or reward program. This increased participation in reward programs has led to the accumulation of large balances of reward units by a great number of individuals.
In conventional reward programs, the rewards may have a long or indeterminate duration, and may be maintained in the reward account until the individual elects to redeem them for goods and/or services. These accumulated balances of indeterminate duration may therefore result in large values of unused reward units being maintained for long periods of time, necessitating substantial effort and introducing uncertainty into accounting and financing programs of the entity. Furthermore, the unused value represents a claim against the entity and/or merchants for which the reward units may be exchanged, adding to the accounting and financing uncertainty associated with the large stores of unused reward units. Additionally, individuals holding reward units may forget about the accumulated reward units and therefore neglect to redeem them, resulting in an underutilization of reward program benefits and a decrease in satisfaction of the individuals.
Accordingly, a need exists for reward systems and methods that facilitate the redemption of rewards by individuals, and that offer additional mechanisms by which individuals may be encouraged to utilize reward program benefits.